


From the Ashes

by Hooda



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Eventual Romance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Memories, Multi, Realization, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Sorry Not Sorry, Survivor Guilt, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-05 12:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11577882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hooda/pseuds/Hooda
Summary: Jyn could still feel the pull of grimy little hands as she passed through the filth-ridden streets with her hair pulled up carefully under a bulletproof helmet. The little hands were connected to even thinner bodies, skinny bundles of bright eyes and mucked clothes begging for something (anything) to call their own.They wanted food and clothes and water and light.“Fuck the order,” Jyn repeated with a hoarse voice. “Fuck you for making us do what we did.”





	1. A Necessary Struggle

There was not an inkling of trust to be found between the earliest members of the team. It was miracle that came out of nowhere in time to save the galaxy from suffering a fate worse than anyone could imagine.

Before the thought of Rogue One’s existence, it was simply a composition of a reprogrammed droid with sly remarks, a spy who was still waiting on three years worth of backpay from a chain of command that was beginning to take his service for granted, and a woman who would flinch nervously at the sound of her real name being thrown at her.

In the beginning, there was not even trust.

The droid never cared.

His analytical and decisive programming denied him the basic emotional ability to _feel_ _anything._ It left him sometimes perplexed at a human’s actions.

For example, on more than one occasion he has seen good spies and hardened soldiers return from their missions with forlorn expressions and harrowing eyes. They are the witness to the horrors that the war had wrought itself into everyday. It only seems to make them ache for something _emotional_ to give their fighting any validation, which was something impractical to K2.

“You’re not prone to having romantic affairs, are you?” K2-SO had once asked a younger Cassian that was still in the early stages of shaving and trying to fit into a parka that was still slightly too big for him.

The young agent shrugged, tapped a knuckle against K2’s chest chassis in passing before sitting down on a crate to prop up a rifle to clean with some of the same tools he had used to crack K2 open for reprogramming.

“I have no time for such luxuries. Not when the Alliance needs me more.”

But it becomes apparently clear to K2 over the years working closely alongside Cassian that the rebel has no interest in anything that could lead him astray from the Rebellion.

Only thrice has K2 ever found Cassian with another sentient in a romantic sense. The encounters end before the sun rises again. They had little to no chance of being permanent, K2 presumes, because they were attractions born under the influence of being too inebriated to make a practical decision.

Eventually over time, K2 begins to base a sentient’s chances of liability on the amount of emotional displayed vulnerabilities. Quietly to himself, he takes in whatever information about them that he can get.

Tivik, in K2’s opinion, was the absolute worst.

A man who might as well have been born shaking with fear, the informant constantly looked like the perfect pick for a Stormtrooper raid. K2 always thought a child could point out the measly man from afar as a rebel.

For this, K2 constantly criticized Cassian’s preferred choice of informant.

But all the details feed into K2’s statistical “bull shit,” as Cassian sometimes calls it, to know the better chances of a job getting done.

He vows Cassian “impregnable”: more droid than he is human at times.K2 also likes to wittingly call his partner: “a decent ~ although sometimes shit head ~ Intelligence agent.”

Jyn, like the few other convicts Cassian has been assigned to work alongside with, is a bomb waiting to find the right chance to go off. She fights as easily as she throws insults, which leaves K2 in charge of holding her upper arm in a vice hold the entire trip to Yavin.

She eyed every little facet of Extraction Team Bravos’ ship keenly.

As a soldier Jyn focused on the way the team moved around her with forlorn expressions. Some were still rubbing sore limbs from her explosive retaliation on Wobani. Tano had a bruise the size of a melon on his shoulder from where Jyn slammed him with the shovel.

As a greedy prisoner Jyn latched onto the team as they peeled open ration packets. Eventually, they leave the area when the staring becomes unbearable.

K2 watches this silently. His fingers clench down warningly whenever Jyn tries to move away from the little space he lets her stand in for the trip.

Jyn Erso is a brokenly and volatile creature; mourning a childhood without realizing it and snapping witty remarks as easily as she breathes air during the first hour of the journey to Jedha.

Cassian barely mutters a word. His headset does not allow him to hear the majority of the verbal fisticuffs. The droid constantly cranes his head around to snap remarks at a woman whose hands are still covered in dust from working in a Wobani mineshaft. He has good reason to ignore their nonsense.

If K2 were capable of _feeling_ anything to all, it would be brewing annoyance at Jyn’s incapacity to reciprocate a straightforward acquaintanceship for the sake of the mission.

But for all his pride in reading sentient emotion and body language to make an analysis on their behavior, K2 could never see or understand the brewing darkness in the back of Jyn’s mind. It was the cave she carried since the day her mother hit the grass and her father raised his arms in surrender.

_______

Cassian barely looks at her but for the few times he has to work his way around the cargo hold. He checks and double checks his bags to make sure he has enough supplies for the trip. And even then, he keeps his eyes averted from Jyn as she leans her back into a corner by the window instead of a seat. She crosses her arms across her abdomen with _his_ stolen blaster across her lap.

Missions were missions and contacts, Cassian knew, were just contacts.

They were the means to reaching for the next rung on the ladder, enough support to get him up to the next bit of information or to the next person who has information worth his time.

And if she is not enough to get the Alliance through the door to the Partisans, Cassian already silently dreads what he will have to do to ensure _silence_ and _safety_ for the Alliance. For his people. His cause.

Maybe he will lead her nonchalantly into an alley with no windows or preying eyes. Maybe she will be quiet if he presses the barrel of his second blaster to her temple, an empty apology drifting over his tongue because _she wasn't enough for them._

Or maybe he would pass the buck to K2, who was always so quick and efficient with the kind of work Cassian sometimes could not stomach: having to be thoughtlessly devoid of mercy when it came to doing what was so necessary.

He thinks about how nervous Tivik was in the end versus how calm Jyn was as she fought exhaustion with sunken eyes. 

Eventually, her head tips back and her eyes fall shut. He watches for a few moments, unabashedly taking in as much as he can about this stranger.

He lets her have her sleep because Force knows she deserves even a little pocket of peace. Cassian was familiar with the exhaustion and lack of sleep that came with being a prisoner of the Empire.

Picking a moment to be weak was a gamble for one’s life during a war.

Her fingers never leave the comfort of the stolen blaster.

K2 mentions something about a meal before they get to Jedha. The droid turns around to throw one last witty comeback but he stops, disappointed, at Jyn’s exhaustion.

Sometimes throughout his life, Cassian wonders how little trust people can have in each other. Time and time again he is proven from how they treat one another, to the basic rights some their deny their neighbors. He sees it again now in how Jyn holds his stolen blaster so firmly even in sleep.

He finds an extra meal packet and leaves it by her side.

_______

They still carry dust from a desert that does not exist anymore on their boots. In a twist of plans, they come back with _three_ informants rather than the _one_ they were originally assigned to retrieve.

The monk finds a seat beside the bear-sized Guardian with the repeater cannon and closes his sightless eyes. The pilot, shaking and shivering like a leaf in a storm, finds a space behind Jyn. His shoulders shake but his gaze is steady when he looks at her, practically drinking everything about Jyn in, like he could not believe she was ever real. She had Galen’s eyes and his determination.

Just like the beginning of this mission, there was no trust as Jyn took up arms with Cassian, similar to how she had done with K2 on the way to Jedha.

He teems with pent aggression when she relays a child’s explanation of the weakness, the only form of evidence _gone_ and any chance of opening contact with the Partisans swept away before their eyes.

He tries not to think about how she has just lost a father, though a traitor and streak of arrogative pain in her past. He was just another person to leave her behind in her life.

Cassian still remembers the day his own father died at the hands of the Separatists. It was a clean shot through the head. Guaranteed no suffering. For a moment, he is almost humbled at the quick end Jeron got versus the one Saw received at the hands of the Empire.

Bodhi stands straighter behind Jyn, supporting her despite her incomplete recollection of the evidence. He speaks of an Imperial with rebellious morals, a man feebly living off hope and helping those who are willing to listen the path to finding themselves.

If Cassian were not so bent on living his life in the shadows of the war, he might have tried to really _listen_ to what the pilot had to say.

Cassian can feel the frustration teeming in his veins. Without the information, without a veritable source, without the hologram, the Alliance will have nothing. He would have to report empty-handed and with his tail tucked between his legs, all because Jyn could not think through her misery to grab _the damn recording._

He has to clench his hands into fists to keep from shoving her into the wall out of frustration.

Instead, he counts his breaths as he turns around and presses his nails so sharply into his palms they could draw blood.

Later, the sight of Jyn before they march out into the rain of Eadu leaves Cassian brewing with the dregs of his previous angry frustration.

 _How could you have forgotten the evidence?_ Cassian wants to spit; _After years of meticulous training under Saw, how could you forget what we went to get?_

The monk sits quietly, staff rolled over his lap where he sits in the corner away from them all. His partner in red, Baze, contemplates them with almond eyes crinkled at the corners and a weathered mouth that barely moves when he speaks up.

Jyn paces the deck of the ship, her hands pushed so far into her pockets she can feel the taunt lining pressing into her skin. The captain tells her to stay behind on the ship, the rain a blistering drumroll against the hull and the ship stinking of smoke from the crash. The monk appraises her with unseeing eyes, but for some reason, he can somehow see what she cannot.

The truth and the reality of what Cassian’s mission _really_ is here.

“The Force moves darkly near a creature that’s about to kill.”

 _That lying son of a bitch,_ Jyn angrily thinks as she buckles a helmet over her hair. The rain is cold and immediately finds the little cracks in her clothes to seep through. It only prods her on further ahead.

She can taste blood in her mouth from when she bites down on the inside of her cheek, nervous and anticipating the fight she will most likely need to put up ahead. Her body is buzzing, alive for once rather than lax on letting the universe run its course.

( _Hope,_ she calls it later when she is reeling with renewed loss and trying to breathe without caving into herself.)

This time it was Jyn’s turn to be pissed at her mission partner. It was Draven who put the captain up to this job - killing the only source of evidence that would stop the planet-killer.

How could he want to kill Galen (if he was even _here)_ when he was living proof for the Alliance to know how the Death Star functioned?

She finds the ladder at the base of the mountain and with hope squeezing her heart tightly, Jyn climbs.

_______

Chirrut can feel the grief like a hurricane hitting the shores of a beach. It ripples and twists sickeningly through the air for him to feel, blending into the bones of everything around them and threatening to throw its recipients over the edge of sanity.

Jyn is a livid mass of untouched power and reservoirs of pain locked away for too long. Though he was not as one with the Force as the Jedi once were, the monk can feel Jyn’s mind like it was a star in an empty galaxy: blazing, bright with murderous power and ready to decimate the next person who stripped all she loved or hoped for away. It was a blinding sight, something so horrific he cannot escape the space to avoid the lances of shooting energy that dissolve around them all.

But he knows no one else can feel it like _he_ can. Years of training and meditation allows him to be so prone to the Force’s mechanisms and prowling around them. He sometimes wonders if Baze is still as connected as he once was before serving time during the Clone Wars. 

Across from Jyn stood the captain: a killer bred from misery that was fighting a war that tore his family and childhood apart. Chirrut feels how _right_ the captain _wants_ to feel in this argument; how he _wants_ to show the woman his reasons for not taking the shot on the clifftop; how he _wants_ to take the words Bodhi learned from Galen about _doing what was right_ and review his reasons for living the  life the Alliance molded him into accepting.

More than anything, the monk feels the strain on the cage the captain holds himself in.

 _The key is in your hand,_ Chirrut wants to say. _Unlock the gate yourself._

They nearly lose it mid-argument. Cassian wants to snap out of anger and Jyn wants to burn everything that surrounds her in her suffocating grief.

He keeps silent, partly because the monk knows that the Force has a way of navigating this situation and helping them into a new chapter of light. Possibly even redemption if the participants let it runs it course and help.

And he knows he is right to stay so quiet when he feels the Alliance teeming around him on Yavin 4. Hope bristles from person to person like little shooting stars in a galaxy so fraught with darkness.

Baze’s presence standing nearby a solid reminder that not _all_ was lost in these last chaotic days. He closes his sightless eyes and lets the bustle of energy carry him to where the Force is the strongest.

Out of the corner of his senses, Chirrut can feel the captain stopping comrades by the arm to pass along a message. The opportunity of redemption quietly flits along the halls, along the whispers that pass so easily between the rebels. It pulses through the Force light a chain of little lights.

They come in small clusters or individually just as Chirrut feels a little sun blister and dampen all at once at the other side of the temple. The crystal around her neck pulls at that energy, feeding it into the Force.

For the first time, the monk had felt _hope_ around Jyn. It was born out of the ashes of her burning misery and loss of her homes. And had bloomed again and just enough to carry her through the meeting. It dampens at times, smothered by the insistence of others that there was nothing to do but disband and live to see another day.

It blossoms precariously when she circles a moon, one that leans in close despite the cavernous space between them and tries to push past transgressions that still clouded them heavily. It whispers calmly and offers redemption wrapped in a mission to help the galaxy survive. It offers hope like nothing Jyn has felt for before.

“Welcome home,” the captain tells her.

And Chirrut is close enough to feel the tingle of warmth that spreads through the lonely sun in a galaxy with no stars to call her own. It reaches into the sky and the ground like a weed that had waited _so_ _long_ to burrow deep. For once, a few shooting stars fluttered past a lonely sun.

_______

There was not an inkling of trust to be found between the earliest members of Rogue One.

It was simply a composition of a reprogrammed droid with sly remarks, a spy learning to listen to himself rather than his superiors, and a woman who burned the air around her without even realizing it.

In the beginning, there was little to no trust between any of them.

In the end, there were thirty-seven total members of Rogue One.

It was an elaborate group of killers and assassins, a droid who learned that emotions can be shown through actions instead of the need to be felt, saboteurs and a few trained snipers, a monk who prayed over the same line more times than anyone cared to count in a minute, a Guardian who never let his finger lift from the trigger of his weapon, a pilot who was braver than any king, and a woman who clutched a sliver of Kyber because it was the only piece of a forgotten home she had left.

In the end, the only survivors were the ones prepared to die the most.


	2. We Are Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stalks back to the cantina with the intention of hopefully running into someone from the group she first arrived with earlier that evening. The lights were low and the single bartender was amusing himself with the crowd that was beginning to peter out one by one.
> 
> Cassian was in the corner, a female Twi’lek with almond eyes and furred collar at his arm. They tipped their drinks together. The glass clinked loud enough for Jyn to hear from across the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me for this one!

It was easier to pretend that the scars never existed if they were always out of sight. If they were out of sight, they were out of mind.

Her mother had been one to follow the saying until her death. Jyn remembers Lyra covering her wrists with long sleeves or jackets, even in the heat, because she was so adamant about covering the evidence of imprisonment.

Only a few times had Jyn ever seen the marks herself. They were long rings of puckered skin that had long since scarred over. They were ugly and a softening red color.

She used to let Jyn touch them.

It was a reminder of what the Empire did to anyone who was a threat, or leverage to get what it wanted. The only reason Jyn never had those same marks was because there were no cuffs tight enough to clamp down on newborns at the time.

But she has them as an adult herself.

They are not as prominent as Lyra’s once were. These were tiny ringlets of scarring skin, the lining sure and straight.

The Alliance had been _unforgiving_ in their anger in the wake of Scarif. She still remembers how the guard who separated her from Cassian, who had been leaning on her heavily until they stumbled onto the _Profundity’s_ landing deck. The guard had been harsh in locking her wrists into a binder. He had pressed down on the contraction setting until Jyn had cried out in sudden pain.

Blood, red and hot, had seeped down the skin of her fingers and onto the white floors of the Mon Calamari ship. Little drops would fall as she was lead away to a holding cell until Command could decide what to do with her. The blood made a little trail along the halls and a small puddle in the cell.

Now, ages since the day they came so close to dying, she still pulls the wrists of her gloves up as high as she can to cover the evidence.

Jyn never cared to administer bacta to them even afterwards. Even when she was allowed a sliver of freedom once the court-martials had come to close and her oaths into the Alliance’s ranks finalized.

She deserved them. The scars would serve as a reminder.

Her enemies were too many to count, but at least were visible to Jyn. They were the Stormtroopers patrolling the galaxy and the Emperor on his gilded throne of corruption and lies.

Her enemies were the people who left scars branded not just across her skin, but across her memories. They were the monsters that tore her family apart or shot each Rogue One member dead.

“You’re a hero Ms. Erso,” General Draven had seethed into her face just after her court-martial had concluded. For all the hope his words carried, they were a cage to Jyn. She had stared down at the General’s hands. He held the data-pad she had used to resign herself over to the Alliance.

She would consider them enemies, but there were too many people here for her to call them something so vile. Most were refugees of ravaged homes, lost in the haze of war and searching (like Jyn herself) for someplace quiet to call their own again. The Alliance was a patchwork of these sentients, these orphans who learn to shoot targets rather than reading, the people who are so lost in the darkness of themselves that they succumb to the pull of the Alliance’s double-edged ideals.

The image of Galen lying on dead on the landing strip surfaced, twisting Jyn’s gut sickeningly. Alliance bombs killed him.

But the anger and grief had to be locked away from letting anyone see.

Out of sight; out of mind.

That was what Lyra had told Jyn when she was barely able to comprehend the war that was happening around her life at the time. She carries that lesson close to her heart now when she pulls the wrist of her gloves up higher.

They slip down too often for her liking.

_______

 

Drinking and the occasional one night stand were not the only ways Jyn knew how to stay active enough during her adjustment to a life within the Alliance. Her orders since her demotion came with extensive physical tests she needed to pass. In conclusion, Jyn spent the majority of her time in physical training. Along with physical exertion came blood flow, a way to stay moving.

Much like the rest of Echo Base, the training rooms were still half carved out and being fitted with the necessary equipment. There were weights and muscle toning machines. On the other end were the training mats that were already bolted into the ice to avoid slipping during fights.

There was very little normalcy for Jyn after her oaths were reluctantly taken under the Alliance’s banner weeks prior on the _Profundity_. Unknowingly, she had been trying to scope the differences between the Partisans and the Alliance. She wanted to learn what was similar that could translate between her new life and the previous she grew up around.

One day she passes a group of bantering officers in training uniforms and wonders if they knew anyone that died on the beach. Was anyone in the Alliance military close enough to know their fellow soldiers-in-arms?

Fighting, it seemed, used the same language between any group of rebels.

There is a sweltering bruise on her shoulder and her face is flush from the exertion, but Jyn was satisfied because she was keeping from the cold. She comes back the next day during her hour break from working on digging out new hallways for the Alliance to burrow into itself. And then she is encouraged to continue coming into the ring by Dameron, who admits he could learn a thing or two by watching her in action.

The increased blood flow sends pinpricks of warmth to parts of Jyn she was certain were frozen solid.

For once, Jyn starts to take a little pride in herself after some victories in the ring. In her mind she is toeing the line of no return. After so many years of solitude, she begins to open her eyes to the people around her and realize how similar they might just be. In the training room, they do not treat her as like the people outside of the room do: cold, distant, averting their eyes when she passes.

They compared bruises and past scars like they were tokens to boost one’s ego or pride.

They offered pilfered drinks and contraband relaxants with easy grins.

The Alliance was nothing similar to the way the Partisan’s functioned, but she somehow finds people with the same thirst to keep the balls of their feet shuffling and their hands raised midair. By the end of the first week training with Dameron she meets a few new people who are more interested in questioning her about the build of truncheon she uses rather than her loyalty.

By the end of the week, she leaves the room headed off to the small cantina with a _group_ , rather than sulking alone and looking for an excuse to help pass the night with ease. They joke about Stormtroopers being made of rubbish and lightheartedly pester Dameron’s wife about the new “miracle” pilot when she joins them for the evening.

For a few hours Jyn felt like she could pretend to like the Alliance if it meant being able to work with these soldiers who were so alike her. For once, she felt lighter than she had felt in what could have been ages. Instead of being inebriated because of miserable and cold inflicting guilt, she was buzzed from the evening with good company.

For a litte pocket of time, there was no uncertainty or self-guilt for having signed herself into service here.

It lasts a good ten minutes. She turns the corner to get to the door of her quarters and sees  _him_  talking to a pilot just returning from the hangars in an orange suit. Cassian barely notices her from the other end of the hall when he shakes the female Twi’lek's pilot’s hand and briefly flashes them a grin.

It wasn't real, Jyn knew. Men like Cassian were never afforded a moment of _true_ happiness to call their own, or even show a legitimate smile. He passes her on his way down the hall, just as she reaches her door.

They do not stop to acknowledge the other. His boots make crunching noises similar to her own on the ice as he passes her and disappears around the corner she just emerged from.

Inside, her two roommates were already bickering about who got to use the refresher first. Jyn takes about a minute of the noise before she storms back out into the cold, the door slamming shut behind her like a finality.

She stalks back to the cantina with the intention of hopefully running into someone from the group she first arrived with earlier that evening. The lights were low and the single bartender was amusing himself with the crowd that was beginning to peter out one by one.

Cassian was in the corner, a female Twi’lek with almond eyes and furred collar at his arm. They tipped their drinks together. The glass clinked loud enough for Jyn to hear from across the room.

Something buzzed right then and there in low in Jyn’s gut and this time it was _not_ from enjoying herself. It was a sinking feeling that was unexplained and foreign to her, something revolting that threatened to come up like bile at the back of her throat.

So like usual and following the pattern from previous liaisons, Jyn settles herself on a stool close enough to the bartender to pass her a shot of something clear. It burns her throat as it goes down. She turns to the pilot sitting a spot over, someone her age with bright eyes and a not a bottle to be seen in his hand.

She gets his attention and offers him a drink.

_______

 

Han recognized her almost immediately.

Chewbacca was thankfully nowhere to be seen. It was not a joyous reunion with the smuggler.

“You still owe me some credits, _pipsqueak_ ,” Han spits when he stops her by the shoulder. He had followed her down a hall out of sight of everyone and for once Jyn wished there were more witnesses about in case Han decided to end their disagreement with a blaster rather than sense. Chewbacca would probably have ripped her arm clean out of its socket if she had run into him before Han.

“Don’t call me that.”

Han had shrugged, indifferent and arrogant like two years before.

“I can call you _whatever_ I want until you pay me the rest of what you owe me, _short-stack_. Or do you need me to get Chewie to remind you just how much it cost us to smuggle your little backside out of the Kafrene?”

_______

 

There was something intimate that Jyn could not find the words to describe brushing against death, yet returning to being strangers immediately afterwards. It was as if the ordeal had been lightyears ago.

The memory of the silence on the beach is worse than any screeching noise a mechanic could muster. Cassian leaning heavily and half-dead across her shoulder for stability, they had stumbled out of the lift as one only to bear witness to the massacre. It was a complete and deafening silence that would plague them for years to come. They walked out of that lift the only survivors of a mission that probably was doomed from the beginning because their actions were based off a whim of _hope._

They ignored the bloodied faces staring up at them. They ignored how their comrades who were so prepared for redemption stared up at a green sky, dead. It was a special type of agony to bear.

And now that they were alive, they were also strangers.

He was the first in the Alliance’s ranking history to be the recipient of a quadruple demotion. She watched from the shadows as the two small circles were removed from his jacket and replaced with alternate markings.

 _Private_ Andor.

Jyn watched solemnly as he stared straight ahead to the opposite wall of Alliance High Command. Draven was quick to replace the markings and hand back the jacket. She stood in the shadows and watched because her eyes would not tear away from the proceedings.

Like a good soldier, Cassian did not show an ounce of shame.

But it was there, they knew, brewing beneath the reasons that sound more like excuses for he even _thought_ of leading the mission.

And why should he after doing what was right? He did what the Alliance was so terrified to sanction a mission for. She wanted to lash out, to howl about how unjust everything was. Rogue One did what was _right_.

And yet they disobeyed orders and Command.

Cassian disobeyed for _her_.

So really, didn't he deserve the repercussions?

She tries to single him out after the proceedings but he disappears before anything can be said. They were strangers after all, Jyn reminds herself, and this was still a war.

Neither one singled the other out.

_______

 

There were never many positive memories for Cassian to reminisce about from his childhood. And not all the pieces were there for him to work with.

There were little snippets of tales, but they were vague. Most of the time, Cassian wonders how much is actually true and how much was just cluttered memories of a young boy without a family to remind him of the specifics.

There were a few stories he remembers. They were the ones he thought about the most. They were the well persevered because he often used to think about how lighthearted they seemed.

He remembers most vividly the details about his father’s endless wooing of the beautiful woman that was his mother. Jeron and Jaina were friends since their teenage years. They had attended the same secondary school and opposed the same wars.

If Cassian could strain himself enough, he pretends to remember what his father would have looked like younger. It was hard to imagine the man blushing at something, much less someone. 

It might as well have been a match made in heaven.

Fest was much too cold to sustain living plants. Its surface was bare and the majority of the year covered in ice. Instead of a colored bouquet, Cassian’s father carved one out ice. It was small, but there were so many intricate details the ice might as well have been alive itself.

He never shared the story. K2 was never had the pleasure of hearing it.

The story was a glaze of happiness. It was an unreachable point for Cassian. For years he had admired the warmth his father had carried when dedicating his life to the Andor family’s safety.

Sometimes, Cassian cannot even _believe_ he was once related to the man. It felt like a dream so far away he was sometimes not even sure if his childhood was his own.

And like his father before him, Cassian learns to dedicate himself. The Alliance needed him more than anything else, more than _anyone_ else. It used his sharp eye to aim through a scope at Imperials and his sanity to wipe their bloody deeds clean.

And when they stop paying him because of financial shortages?

He stayed.

_______

 

Eventually, Jyn wins enough money in a game of sabaac to get Han off of her tail for a little while. There weren't too many debts she ever had to pay off but if they could be dealt with quickly, it meant she’d be free of them quicker.

He still does not let her go even after she pays him back the full debt.

“I seem to remember you and I _bonding_ all those years back because we had an equal opinion about the War,” Han chirped, his voice low and devoid of enough charm that she knows he is being serious for once.

“I’ve grown, Han. I’m not the same person I was when we met at that bar years ago.”

“You told me you hated the rebels almost as much as the Empire.”

“I never had the luxury of political opinions like I do today.”

“No, but _now_ you just decide out of nowhere that the Alliance is in need of your help? After years of solidarity and running, you’re going to fight?”

Han could see the decade old exhaustion in her bones. He could see how she carried herself like a dead-man walking. There was something _missing_ from the little humanity she carried inside of her. Jyn was ready to succumb.

“Han, there is nothing else for me out in the galaxy.”

“Of course there is, Erso.”

His eyes had shown bright with the optimism that came with a giddy victory. It was look Jyn often found herself wishing at times.

“And what _exactly_ would that be? Hmm? Tell me: what else is there for me to do other than taking up arms again. I hate the Empire more than I do the rebellion, Solo. I’d rather die fighting than wait for them to shoot me when I am on the run.”

What point was there to running again when half of the galaxy undoubtedly already knew her name? What point was there to survive and not give back to the cause her soldiers once lived to see stand?

She turns to leave the hangar, her boots clicking across the ice and the soles digging in just a little deeper into every step Jyn takes out of the large room. Some of the technicians give her a berth of space so she can get through.

Han stands there numbly from the cold and her words. The credits clink as he counts them in his hands.


	3. Fuck Your Order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn could still feel the pull of grimy little hands as she passed through the filth-ridden streets with her hair pulled up carefully under a bulletproof helmet. The little hands were connected to even thinner bodies, skinny bundles of bright eyes and mucked clothes begging for something (anything) to call their own.
> 
> They wanted food and clothes and water and light.
> 
> “Fuck the order,” Jyn repeated with a hoarse voice. “Fuck you for making us do what we did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was long time coming and Im not sorry. I needed the time to flesh this one out! :)

The occasional times she tries to imagine Bodhi, he was distorted in some way. Her memories of the man were brief and distorted because of time. For instance Jyn could specifically remember the angle of his facial scruff but could barely remember the exact tone of his voice. Was it rough or smooth when he managed to speak a line without quivering?

That was the thing about memories; they faded despite being cherished. The painful ones would dilute over time into softer versions. The happy ones slowly lost their warmth as the holder began to slip on the smallest of details.

These facts were not lost to Jyn, who sat most evenings away from her comrades trying to _forget_.

She wanted to remember every little detail there was to know about Rogue One: how the majority smelled of jungle mugginess, how their eyes glinted in the light of the deck from the brief lighting, how Chirrut hummed a little when the silence to Scarif was impossible to bear. She wanted to remember everything and yet _forget_ at the same time.

It stung for her to reminisce about the cadence of Baze’s voice, the few times he spoke aloud but drawing everyone’s attention nonetheless, and how he called her ‘little sister.’

Her Kyber crystal thrums sometimes like it can feel her sorrow. It pulses against her skin as a link to remembering Lyra. The memories of her late mother were muddled and fleeting.

Sometimes it helped to touch her fingertips to the crystal. She could imagine her mother doing the same in tense moments. Jyn could press her fingers over the planes of the crystal and know that her mother had done the same. It was the only veritable connection she felt to the woman who had told her to run so many years ago.

Other times it just helps to drink.

_______

 

The Alliance does not outwardly celebrate Rogue One’s mission. But the anniversary of annihilating the Death Star coincides around the same time, so Command decides to turn a blind eye for a couple of evenings when Han makes a fortune selling illegal rum and spirits.

Rogue One was a reason to mourn. Annihilation Day was a reason to get drunk and remember how there was so much debris in Yavin’s atmosphere, pilots had trouble maneuvering their way out.

Jyn cannot stand the staring.

People give her a fraction of space to pass when she makes her way through the busy halls. Their eyes latch onto her when she does not notice. They judge her. They whisper about her. Almost every topic about her is about her insubordinate habits and untrustworthy Partisan upbringing.

News of who led the Rogues traveled quickly through the Alliance in the days between the battle over Scarif and the day the Death Star ended.

She finds the refuge from the unwanted attention on Han’s ship.

“It’s a piece of junk.”

Chewbacca made an indignant sound in retaliation. 

“Fuck you, Erso,” Han yells from the cockpit.

He emerges a few moments later with a bottle of caramel brown liquor in each hand. She accepts a bottle graciously and gratefully before finding a seat on the couch situated in a corner of the main hold.

Han drinks straight out of his bottle. Jyn sighed and realized it would be pointless to ask the smuggler for a glass.

Unlike Han, Jyn takes her time taking the first sip.

“I have to be honest Erso,” Han sighed as he slumped further into his seat. “I think I’m beginning to like _you_ more than the rebels.”

The laugh Jyn pulls off comes out harsh and disbelieving.

It seemed even the _Falcon_ could not fend off the biting cold of Echo Base, but the alcohol warms them just enough that their blood would not freeze solid.

“I’m serious,” Han continued while taking a swig before turning to face Jyn, who was making herself comfortable by propping her boots up onto the console bolted into the ground of the hold. It was a console not meant for planning or running engine schematics, but rather used for gaming.

“Let me guess: I’m more likely to sleep with you than Leia?”

Han made a face like he just sucked on a sour fruit.

“I am _way_ too old for someone like _her_.”

Jyn rolled her eyes.

“How do I differ from the rest of the Alliance?”

“You actually paid me back. It might have been late and I needed to prod you into doing it, but you paid me what was due.”

“The Alliance promised you credits?”

“Luke might have mentioned something in return for helping him blow the Death Star.”

“I met someone who is still waiting for three years of backpay.”

“Shit,” Han grumbled, tipping the bottle back in the direction of his mouth for another gulp. “I’m screwed.”

Then: “You’re different from the rest of the Alliance in more ways than you know, Erso.”

Her mouth tastes bitter and it was not just from swallowing too much alcohol at once.

“I try not to be.”

“But you are.”

_______

 

The missions were brief. She is placed under the supervision of a strict commander who introduced himself as Tor Mon. He is one of the few leaders Jyn has ever had the pleasure of serving that was not constricting when it came to her broad range of abilities out on the field.

Tor constructs his team of thirty out of men and women, Jyn realizes, that all carried a similar structure of function. They were former militants of outside rebel cells or reformed convicts, both professions of which Jyn was painfully reminded of. She could still occasionally feel the little scars strewn like knick knacks across her skin from a routine mission gone wrong during the last year of her service to the Partisans.

They were quiet at meetings unless spoken to or encouraged to share any information or input. Jyn watched from the back of the room whenever Tor or the second in command took the stage. It was in her nature to observe.

Did she inherit that trait from her parents, Jyn often wondered to herself during meetings like these; scientists and fanatics of exploring the unknown?

Tor was a large man. He easily towered over half the men on the team, all of whom made Jyn look like a teenager when she stood to full height beside them on flat ground. But Tor was a special kind of tall to observe. He did not wave his arms about to make his point or intimidate those under his command by stepping into their personal space.

It helped his red hair brought in the attention from everyone around him.

He liked to inhale deep before talking big and loud. It was hard to miss him in the middle of a throng of mechanics after flights. The small mechanics often looked like little matchsticks in their bright suits when Tor could wade his way through them.

Jyn does not care about the Alliance. She does not care who sits on High Command’s meetings or who is watching her to make sure she does not step out of line. Her roommates were a buzz she could forget at the drop of a stone.

The image of Cassian would occasionally flit across the back of her mind late at night and leave her frozen under blankets that never seemed to warm her enough. It was usually a small memory; the scent of his hairy when she pressed her nose into the soft tufts just above his ear, the blue sheen across his face when he slipped out from the shadows and shoved fifteen years of grief down her throat in an attempt to wring every detail about Galen from her.

Those were the little snippets that kept her awake late into the freezing nights. But as easily as there was warmth between them, there was coldness. It was bitter and clawed at Jyn every time she spotted Cassian drifting through the halls from one destination to another.

Sometimes, when she was truly feeling the sting of loneliness, she would allow herself to reminisce about the ghost of his palm pressing into the small of her back. He had been so warm that day, or had it just been the aura of the impending wave of ungodly heat. He had pulled her closer than anyone had cared to hold Jyn since childhood.

_“I’m right here.”_

Those were the words he had rasped through the hell around them, right into her ear. They were three simple words, just as simple as _welcome home._ They should have died on that beach.

 

_______

 

He sees her one day as he walks into the main hangars. There was a small pack at her booted feet and a teammate at her shoulder. Cassian had slowed enough to blend into the approaching group of techies headed for the next incoming ship, but he was too slow to evade Jyn’s hawk-like eyes.

In the moment of uncertainty, his feet had stuck to the icy floors and his knees froze. Her eyes were hazel, he realized even from afar, when they met his dark ones. Cassian was no fool to ignore the way her fists clenched at the sight of him, like she was uncertain whether she wanted to strangle or punch him.

Someone calls out her name from the opening to a ship. It was a large man with a beard as red as fire and a jacket made of more fur than general synthetic thermal ones the Alliance issued its members.

Jyn seemed to have shaken herself from some sort of stupor. He watched as she leaned down to grab her bag and sling it across a shoulder. She disappears onto the ship with the red-head without a second glance back.

 

_______

 

They should have seen the signs even before they left Base.

How could they have been so blind? Their intel was as sound as could come by and their orders were organized down to the hairs. All of their marks were on point, all of their targets prepped. Everything was supposed to work out. And yet they were so blind.

They should have known better than to trust an Imperial spy with a bomb detonator and clear instructions on how the mission would fold out.

Tor leaned his elbows into his knees with a sigh that seems to last a million miles and translates a pain deeper than Jyn would ever care to unearth. He was a man of reason and suspicion, raised and bred by the war to lead people willing to die for what they believed was right. They all had the same goal in mind, similar reasons for survival and the same daydream to skin the Emperor alive for the galaxy to see.

He thought he knew a fellow soldier and now paid the price for his blind trust. Jyn does not tell him this, but more blood was streaking across his forehead every time he ran his fingertips across the skin above his eyebrows. It was the blood of the traitor he shot and beat in the alleyway.

And in the end, they had lost twenty-one of their thirty comrades.

The ship feels too empty as they fly back to Echo Base.

Jyn can still feel the skin of the traitor’s neck under her fingertips from not even an hour before. Tor may have shot the man in the calf as he attempted to run away and beat him into submission, but Jyn was ultimately the one who slid quietly into the scene. There were the screams of the Imperial spy fluttering through the abandoned alleyway and the squelching sound of water as Jyn walked through a puddle to reach the man.

Tor had moved aside to admire his handy work; a split lip, an eye so badly bruised he could barely see through it, a gash across his forehead, a ring of bruises along his temple, teeth half knocked out.

She was deathly quiet as she kneeled beside the traitor, his leaking blood seeping into the fabric of her pants. Her hands were steady as she took in the damage to the pathetic man’s life.

He stopped screaming not because of the sudden change of oppressor, but because Jyn had wrapped her hands around his throat. His screams had cut off in surprise, as if he did _not_ see a pair of gloved hands making for his throat seconds before. The trachea was just under Jyn’s left thumb. She had pressed down until the man was reduced to just a body inches from her bent knees.

Blank, cold, unmoving eyes stared up at Jyn.

Tor’s hand had skimmed her shoulder just enough to warn her about the impending Imperial troops who had undoubtedly already called for assistance.

Their hands were marked with scratches and blood alike. Tor had kept his sifting through the mess of red curls atop his head and Jyn’s around her mother’s necklace. The mission rang in her ears.

The peal of gunfire as she watched her comrades get picked off one by one haunted her in the twenty minutes of sleep she got on a dull metal bench. The feel of the traitor’s life satisfyingly seeping from his body as he slowly lost oxygen kept her awake.

 

_______

 

Time can only tell how bitter Jyn grows to become. It stiffens over her like a callous being worn over time. She was accustomed to the brutal cold of war, the infinite _hate_ that looms around for the grabbing, or the feeling that the Alliance does not _fit_ her somehow.

With ever passing mission the hold they have over her becomes stifling. Every time she leaves her bunk room, she is pummeled with the everlasting cold that permeates her bones. It was miserable. _She_ was miserable.

The Alliance was a war machine, but it was not _her_ people. There was no spontaneity for her anymore like living free of war had given her. It was day after day of bitter isolation and hiding aboard the _Falcon_ whenever it was dark for pilfered drinks with Han. They were quiet most of the time.

It was dark outside _a lot_.

Command begins to grate on her nerves just as much as her restlessness.

After pining for a _purpose_ for so long, had she begun to realize too late that the Alliance was not her own?

 

_______

 

Cassian has never seen someone so livid in the presence of Command. Of course there were the few times himself that he would brew with malcontent towards his superiors during briefings, but he had schooled himself into an act of clipped politeness and keeping his words centered.

He watches as Jyn stalks into the hall, cold in the eyes and body rigid. Her boots pound into the ice and her breath escapes in puffs of glistening white.

She was livid beyond unimaginable heights. It was light the top had been blown to a gasket low in her belly and every bitter resentment or image was hitting her in the chest full-force. Everything she managed to keep down in the year since her survival came surfacing like a filthy geyser finally venting.

Tor makes a move to grab his second in command’s arm, but Jyn yanks herself out of his grasp and points a single menacing finger at the three generals awaiting their report at the head of the war table. It illuminates their faces in a ghastly white color that has no differentiation from the placid sunlight of Hoth.

Cassian barely moves a muscle from the corner where he stands.

“They’re all dying because of you,” Jyn spit, words low and chilling.

Leia glanced morosely at Draven, who kept his gaze fixated on the accusing Pathfinder. The princess kept her hands smooth and flat on the war table. Her eyes glance anywhere but to Jyn.

Cassian knows from years of observance Leia’s tell-tale expression of being wrapped up in the repercussions Command faces for decisions she was overruled on. Her shoulders were solid but her eyes stayed grounded to her carefully placed hands. Whatever just happened, Leia had vetoed on the order.

Mon Mothma raises a hand to keep her fellow comrades from saying a word in retaliation.

“The order was necessary. Please, Sergeant Erso, we understand the repercussions of that decision, but-,”

“But now innocent people are dying because you couldn't think of an alternative,” Jyn seethed. Her voice carries through the populated room like a gust of icy wind from the hangars. She stepped forward until she stood directly across from the three stoic Generals at the table, hands pressing into the lit rim until her eyes glow illuminated grey rather than mulled green.

“Sergeant Erso, you are to follow your orders as _instructed_ without retaliation for what _could_ have happened. Your position does not give you the clearance or liberty to barge into Command-,”

“Fuck the order.”

Leia’s head snaps up at the same time as Cassian’s.

“ _Sergeant_ _Erso_ ,” Mon Mothma hissed from between her drawn tight teeth in an attempt to keep her placated senatorial composure. Jyn flicks her attention from the seething burly tan-haired general to the woman with hair kissed just as red as Tor’s. “You _never_ address your superiors in such a crude manner.”

“I don’t care,” Jyn spits, her voice slightly getting louder. Tor stares at her from the entrance of the room, along with a few other astounded on-watching individuals.

Jyn really does not care about who tells her to shut up or follow orders or abandon people she knows she is in somewhat capacity to help. Who is Command to tell her to “ _be respectful”_ when they could not respect the value of life or the mission by ordering the Pathfinders to pull out of the front line of a hasty rebellion on an Imperial indentured servitude planet.

It was more a series of floating moon-sized rocks with mining depots along its surface and miniature shanty-cities built along the ports. The Empire had taken the people and their small government under its control, which reduced their rights to almost nothing. They never realized they were more slaves to an unjust system until a rebel cell blew a quarter of the depots into shreds of crap.

The Alliance was supposed to step in and help liberate wherever they could across the galaxy.

Jyn could still feel the pull of grimy little hands as she passed through the filth-ridden streets with her hair pulled up carefully under a bulletproof helmet. The little hands were connected to even thinner bodies, skinny bundles of bright eyes and mucked clothes begging for something ( _anything_ ) to call their own.

They wanted food and clothes and water and light.

They wanted everything that she could provide if they had won.

And just when she knew they could finish the Imperials shooting from the other side of the no-man’s land, the orders pooled in that they were to evacuate.

If she lets herself reminisce, she can still feel the ghost of their little fingers pulling on the cuffs of her jacket sleeves. She could feel the _hope_ radiating from them like little beacons of starlight.

She stares at her superiors now, tears threatening to surface, her heart pounding with an uncanny hatred for their orders that they gave without second thinking about anyone but their soldiers.

Her life would never be worth more than anyone else’s. It was there to serve and protect those who opposed the Empire; not for the Alliance to value more than the lives of people she ready to protect for the _future_ , the _cause_.

“Fuck the order,” Jyn repeated with a hoarse voice. “Fuck you for making us do what we did.”

Draven piped up with a blooming red face.

“We saved your _lives_ by sending the fall-back call. Those Imps were crossing the no-man’s land quicker than you would have been able to hold the off. We had to save as many of you as we could.”

“And now people are going to die because we abandoned them to the Empire.” Jyn was a little surprised to hear Leia speak up so boldly.

Cassian watched quietly. Realization slowly dawned on his face.

“Not even _Saw_ was this cruel.” Jyn let go of the war table with a slight push back onto her heels. “At least he saw the potential in civilians. He took them in and included them into his rebellion.”

“Yes, and now you're going to compare us to him because he abandoned you. Just like you claim that we did to the people on this last mission.” It was a low blow that Draven takes sinister pride in the way it cripples the determination in Jyn’s stance.

Cassian sucks in a breath and Leia’s brows pinch together so tightly he thinks they may blend together permanently.

“Yeah,” Jyn agrees mockingly, “just like Saw abandoned me. So it should not come as such a surprise to you when I sign my papers of resignation.”

“Excuse me?” Draven barks. “Resignation?”

A weight drops low in Cassian’s gut, like a hammer on an anvil.

“I do not fight for a rebellion that pledges their support to those who need it, but at the last minute opt to pull out and leave those very people at the mercy of the Empire they worked their lives to liberate themselves from. You're fucking useless to the rebellion and all its efforts to help free people from the Empire.”

Tor nods with her words. His red beard catches onto the light of the war table with a gleam that makes it seem alive like an ember.

“And what makes you so certain, Sergeant, that you will be able to walk off this Base?” Draven spat. Cassian involuntarily let his fingers drift to the side barrel of the blaster strapped to his leg.

Jyn turned her attention back to the eldest of the present senators.

“A year ago you promised me freedom with no ties if I helped you contact my father. We agreed that payment would be enough for my service. I know it has been too long to ask of this now of all times, but with your permission General Mothma, I ask of you to grant me my freedom. You promised my name would be erased and my charges cleared. You promised me my life.”

For a long minute, the air between them sat cold and stiffly unmoving as the Senator took in Jyn’s words.

Mon Mothma nods, a movement so small Jyn almost missed it.

The weight that lifted from her shoulders was unimaginable.

 

_______

 

Her name disappears from his data pad screen moments after he breaks the passcode into the Intelligence files. Her entire log simply blips out of existence right before his eyes. Of course, Cassian knows that there is some server beyond even Mon Mothmas’ reach somewhere hidden within the Alliance with every name and every record ever taken within its existence. But the odds of Cassian breaking into those to see the generic holo-picture of Jyn’s face were none. His screen goes dark in his hands.

She would be deleted from the rest of existence just as easily, if not a little quicker. With the press of a button, every charge over her head would disappear overnight. It left her with a galaxy of opportunities that Cassian could never fathom to understand.

For once, Jyn was free.

 

_______

 

Han gives her a somber look as Chewbacca growls in disapproval.

“Don’t give me any of the ‘are you sure about this crap’ okay? I already got it from Leia and about half a dozen officials.” Jyn slung her small bag up the ramp of the _Falcon._ The duffel hit the wall with a small thump.

“Is this seriously how you plan to end your work with the Alliance? By guilt-tripping a Senator into giving you a reward from a year ago?” Han sighed.

Jyn shrugged indifferently. Her jacket still reeked of mining dust.

“I’ve served my time; haven't I?”

A year, to be exact.

No one gave her a second glance as she packed her shit into a small duffel she traded her ration stamps to get. There was no one to beg her to stay behind or implore her to rethink her decision as she stuffed the bag with her meager possessions. It was mostly a collection of second-hand clothes she managed to scrounge between missions; an extra shirt, a pair of thick lined pants, socks with little nicks from use along the fringes.

There was nothing getting left behind but a few nicks in the icy walls from where she kicked the ice whenever she was furious and fuzzy memories from half-hearted one night stands.

Han pressed quietly. “So you're _really_ doing this?”

Jyn shot him a smirk. “Holy shit, Solo; you missing me already?”

Chewbacca laughed from the cockpit; a deep rumbling sound that felt familiar despite Jyn almost never having a straight conversation with the Wookie. Han gave her a half-assed slap on the shoulder.

“Came you blame me? My favorite drinking buddy wants me to fly her out into the middle of nowhere. You're leaving me here with the galaxy’s most miserable group of people on the worst fucking planet in the galaxy.”

They chuckled as they made for their respective areas.

“Shut the cargo doors when you are ready to go,” Han tells her as he makes for the cockpit. “Chewie and I’ll get her up and running until then.”

She watches Han disappear around the corner, further into the _Falcon_ and out of sight. It was late in the middle of the night, so there were only the necessary skeleton night crews out and about throughout the hangars. They were huddled around their respective ships or hanging out around one another, hands rubbing together to keep the cold at bay or sharing a few laughs to keep their voices from freezing over. No one pays attention to her as she takes one last moment to look.

Just as her hand is hovering over the cargo door lock to let Han know she is ready, someone bursts into the hangar.

It was out of the corner of her eye. He burst into the room with flushed cheeks and heavy panting, like it had been a while since he had forced himself to run so quickly. Cassian barely had to scan the hangar for the _Falcon:_ Han insisted on landing her in the center of the commotion so she could be admired from every angle.

Jyn falters, just for a second, when Cassian quickly dodges workers and droids alike as he makes a fast beeline for the _Falcon._

It would be so easy to shut him out right now. All it would take is a press of a button and he would be closed off from her forever.

Either she hesitated too long or Cassian was too quick because a moment later the air in her lungs was knocked out of her chest.

It was awkward and angled incorrectly, but Cassian’s arms kept her upright as he pulled her close. Her face went directly into the soft fur that lined his neck, the jacket smelling faintly of old motor oil and something akin to spices. For a stagnant moment, Jyn was paralyzed.

Her arms slowly tightened about his sides and she finally got enough air into her lungs again to think straight. By the time he pulls away, she was reeling from the surprise of the moment.

Jyn opens her mouth like she wants to speak as they stand there, too close for her normal comfort but for some reason not repelling, but no words come out of her mouth. What could she even say?

Cassian speaks instead. “I had to do it. I didn't want you to leave without at least a goodbye, Jyn.”

_Jyn._

Her name sounded soft when it rolled off of his accented tongue. It felt safe, unlike the last year of isolation between the two of them. It felt like it fit.

After a moment of catching her breaths, she finally mustered herself up enough to look him in the eye. His eyes were dark from seeing the unimaginable, most of which he has done himself. There was a little scar just above his right eyebrow that she thinks he got from Scarif.

They were going to die together that day. They had accepted that fact as their arms wove around the other.

_I’m right here._

He was so warm when he pulled her close as the horizon burned.

_Welcome home._

She had never seen so much regret or hope mixed so thoroughly in someone as she did in him. That little bit of corrupted light spilled into Baze, as well as Bodhi, and Chirrut helped keep it together for them until the end.

_Jyn._

It was her name, soft and accepted, that felt like home.

“I can’t tell you where I am going,” she admits quietly.

“I know.” His eyes flash darkly. A lie; she knows he will stop at no ends to needle every little bit of information as possible concerning her footsteps through the galaxy. He was a spy. It is what he was good at in the first place.

“Good bye: Jyn,”

She doesn't say it. She simply watches as he turns around and walks calmly off of the ramp towards the hangar. His hair was long at the back of his neck again.

“Cassian,” Jyn started.

He stopped enough to turn around and glance back up.

A little smile spread across her face like a little bit of sunlight.

(Her eyes sparkled like stardust, he realized at that moment.)

“Someday, when this is all over, how would you like to go out and get a drink with me sometime?”

He smiled a little bit back up at her from her elevated spot at the doorway of the _Falcon._ Chewbacca growls something impatient from the cockpit.

“You know where to find me.”

“And where would that be?”

She tapped the button for the locks and the ramp began to lift.

Cassian flashed her one last smile.

“You know: _home_.”

He disappears as the ramp glides into place.

Beneath her feet, the _Falcon_ spurs to life. She finds her bag on the floor and wipes the warmth from her face as she dumps herself into the cockpit. The Hoth horizon looms above them as a dark haze of midnight stars.

“Where to, Sergeant?” Han mocks, pressing some buttons here and there.

She claps him on the shoulder from the seat she takes behind his.

“Did you get the coordinates that Tor sent you from the last mission? I have some miners I need to help bust out of Imperial rule.”

Jyn watches as the starts blur.

They shoot off without a look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue is in the works - should I post one or not?


	4. Epilogue: Welcome Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And with Jyn at the center of them, leading and providing her expertise, Cassian knew they could probably conquer the galaxy.
> 
> She placed her palms down on the war table and leaned forward until her face was illuminated by the soft light emanating from the edges of it. Her mulled green eyes caught Cassian’s across the room and a pit opened in his stomach.
> 
> Jyn tipped her chin up and Cassian met her eyes.  
> (They were supposed to die together.)  
> “Shall we begin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! Botched the editing on this one, so if there are any inconsistencies or mistakes just let me know! Ep. might (maybe!) be subject to change in the future - if I find the time or coffee to keep me going. 7,000 words is A LOT, so don't be surprised if I don't upload for a while. (I'm a little burnt out)
> 
> Feel free to leave kudos and comments!

**_Freedom is the state in which we can better our situation. Everyone has the right to do so if we choose. The alternative is slavery and endless servitude to those who think they are greater than us. If one is a slave, then one has no such right or power. One cannot better one’s situation at all. (Anonymous)_ **

 

**_7 ABY_ **

 

There was little the people of the KX-239 system of floating meteor-moons could do when the cold season came to pass. Because their atmosphere was thinner than most human-habitat planets, it was susceptible to letting in cold flashes from the ever freezing vastness of space. The stars twinkled overhead like wardens over the people hunkering down in their double room apartments and stilted homes.

The little townships scattered across the moons grew quiet during the brisk evenings that tumbled into uncertain nights. Their main concern was not how to patch their atmosphere from crumbling apart, but rather how many more weeks of blistering cold they could survive.

Little children huddled under the warmth their parents offered as they gazed out beyond dusty glass panes that threaten to break with the smallest gusts of night air.

The Empire never cared enough to produce and provide proper building materials for the people of the meteor-mining moons. To the Empire, cheap was better than livable. Why spend more on dispensable lives when they could fend for themselves. If they had survived this long on these spindly moons, how could they not survive with the Empire occupying control there?

But the truth was that the sentients of the KX-239 system had been failing to piece together living conditions for years before the Empire arrived to their doorstep. With the fall of the Republic came a shortage of materials and supplies. Too immersed into poverty, the people of the system never stood a chance of leaving their harsh homes. The few who scavenged enough to buy tickets off-world only had enough to jump a system or two over, where conditions were not so different.

So when the Empire landed on their little meter-mining moons, they applauded the arrival of a proper government after almost two years of lawless growing poverty. But the Empire never did its homework. Instead of providing even basic provisions to win over the slums of the townships, they took one glance through lenses coated in prejudice and decide the locals could fend for themselves. They had survived _this_ long, right?

But now the Empire’s flags have long since been burnt in the victory pyres after the arduous fight against the White Skulls. The Stormtroopers stood no chance when local rebels blew the mines from under their white boots and raised their shovels into the air, rather than down into the hard ground.

The few remaining White Skulls scattered like frightened mice into their great triangular ship and whipped out of the system before any more unprecedented damage could be wrought. In the wake of their hurried escape, they left behind miles of impoverished townships with near-completely depleted mining shafts and stations. Like nearly two decades before, their government had left them with nothing to eat, nothing to build themselves homes with, nothing to salvage but their shanty homes and sodden families.

That was six years ago.

There was no difference but the line of leadership throughout the system and a fleet of meager ships awaiting for the order to take off. They stood lined along the edges of what was once the mining fields where the people slaved for hours a day. It was fitting that they ships should be docked there for the evacuation of the KX-239 people; where better to convene and take a final piss before take-off than the very place where the Empire had them hunched over and aching for a sliver of unimaginable freedom.

At the head of the field overlooking the fleet sitting under the starlit night was the contingent of Commanding offers. They stood to attention with their arms straight at their sides and their hair pulled back as neat as possible as the Commanding General took a final sweeping look at the fleet.

“General Erso,” the fleet director announced, “we are ready for the evacuation. All ships are ready for your command.”

Jyn stood over the railing of the overwatch tower. The dura-steel rail underhand was worn from years of facing the elements. But it stood firm for her as she watched with viscous pride and appreciate for her people’s success.

She took a final sweeping look before turning around to face her Commanding officers. Their expressions were ones that were ready for a taste of air cleaner than the mining air they have breathed for decades, for sunlight that does not strip the surface of their precious meteor-moons like bleach. They gazed at her from under their sodden hoods lined with little nicks from improper care.

They were _her_ people now.

She would lead them beyond the stars.

“Begin the evacuation of the KX system.”

 

_____

 

She no longer dons the typical vest with her Alliance insignia stitched over her right breast. The insignia had been ripped out before she even left Hoth. It was thrown into the trash without a second thought or remorse. The vest took a year of use before it torn down the side from Jyn’s very poor stitching job. In an attempt to keep it from halving in the middle of a cold season, she had crudely pulled it together with twill. In the end, twill was no match for usage over time.

Her Commanding officers had gifted her the jacket she wore now. It was exactly the same style the majority of the meteor-mining township wore. A black garment with thick shoulder padding and stiff, it was a jacket made to be used in the field. It pulled tightly closed with a zipper and overlaying row of buttons for added protection. The cuffs were evidently eroding because they were obviously sewn back hastily.

Jyn never cared.

The jacket was a symbol of her acceptance into the township. She no longer wore a tie to the Alliance.With the harsh conditions of the meteor-moon’s surface came the need to trade her old trodden boots for the more comfortable type the people wore when mining. They were thick and darker from constantly being in the dark dust. All together, the people of the KX-239 system dressed darkly and efficiently. It was a style Jyn picked up easily.

She even opted for the tight braids that started at the crown of her head instead of the typical bun. It was more a decision made in her hasty flee from the Alliance. There were holograms throughout the galaxy no doubt of her with her typical hairstyle, so the opportune decision to make was to change her appearance as minimally as possible. She already had an averagely unrecognizable face. The soft edges of the braid would tickle the nape of her neck when it swayed slightly, like the arm of a pendulum.

Her mother’s necklace never strayed from its customary spot over her chest. It would stay nestled under her shirt, out of sight, to lessen the risk of someone picking up that particular detail that set her apart from the normal passerby in a crowded room.

 

_____

 

They call her “protector.”

The aldermen of the self-sufficient townships call her “Commander,” but she suspects there may be some worse language passed between the leaders that they would rather not expose outright. Some jests and names were left in the shadows of personal opinion.

The children call her “liberator.”

Jyn in turn calls some of them the “lost children.” They were the ones that lost both or one of their guardians during the year long rebellion. They follow behind the two guards assigned as her security detail through the township, the sounds of their little feet and peals of giggling trailing behind Jyn like a ray of blooming sunlight. They whispered their name for her in a language she had yet to perfect fluidly.

The guards would turn a blind eye to the smaller woman (who they knew was completely able to handle herself in a skirmish) when she turned to greet the group. The bravest ones would peel off the group and reach out for the sleeves of her jacket, pulling her further into the miniature fray.

“Liberator,” they would call. “Liberator!”

The light of hope in their eyes was enough to pull Jyn in for hours at a time. She ran races with some or bought small fried treats for others. When she gazed at their small smiles and long-lost innocence, she saw her childhood self.

She knew the struggle: the aching need for a guardian, the solace that came with being left to fend for oneself during a war.

But now that the war was long over, she just wanted them to be safe.

They were the unprecedented hope, glimmering like stardust.

 

_____

 

No leader is truly trusted by the entirety of anyone who is a subject to their judgement or word. It is a known fact Jyn keeps in the back of her mind whenever the aldermen of the various townships convene with Command.

Often, more towards the beginning of her position as General, they cussed out in a language she had yet to learn. Their opinions were untranslated and safe behind the notion that she would not understand them.

Jyn did not care. If they had something to say, or a suggestion as to how to better the lives of their people, they could tell her in Basic.

The Unification of the townships was the best decision regarding the safety of the meteor-moon system as a whole. The townships were collections of workers and families spread out. They lived under perishing roofs but survived off of their collective hate for their oppressors.

The original call for aid that the Alliance had received was from the first rebel cell that had organized enough to rake a mark against the hand that had kept them oppressed for years. The Empire never truly had many soldiers in the system. It was small enough that the Imperial officers knew how to keep the local population from killing their soldiers. A few months of bloodshed and pointless fighting against the minuscule militias and the Empire had taken the system for its own.

But the Empire’s own weakness was the reason they lost it. A system on the dregs of getting killed off by poverty and injustice, they had not cared to reinvigorate the meteor-moons. The Empire had simply taken them under its massive hand as just another system to call their own.

And any Empire that focuses on growing and greedily calling more as their own pays little attention to the problems that their own subjects bring to light. It was a system prime with potential.

The Unification was Jyn’s first order as General. It was a call for the aldermen of the townships to band together. A pack would survive longer than the lone soldier.

The overwhelming majority agreed. They could have their personal opinions on the Alliance-turned liberator stowed away and whispered behind her back. But the truth of the situation was that they were down to no other option but banding together. Survival as a single cell was going to kill the few rebels the system had mustered in a manner of weeks; months, if they were smart to hide from the Empire’s sight.

The elder aldermen, the leaders who had pulled their people through thick and thin, they were the most wary of the newcomer General.

“Where there is a _will_ , there is a way.” Saw used to tell her that repeatedly over the years under his tutelage. It proved a useful motto for Jyn throughout the years since he left her in the bunker.

The people of the KX system had the _will_. It was only a matter of prodding their dreams of freedom into action to form a new reality.

Jyn just happened to pave the path to get their _way_.

 

_____

 

The people of KX made a shitty brew of spirits. Cut off from the majority of surrounding systems, the Empire had expected the people to be cornered and reined in. Unfortunately, alcohol was a lawless pleasure that could result in heavy punishment had someone been caught with a flask or two on their persons. Cut off and pissed off at the Empire, the people of the townships began to brew their own drinks.

They were bitter or the flavor too diluted. Sometimes the liquor colors would too clear that buyers thought they were getting scammed into buying water. Other times it was so strong, it could peel paint.

In the final raid against the local Imperials, Jyn and her Commanding officers splurged on the fine whiskeys they found behind a secret panel of a closet in a private apartment. The drink was meant for decadent occasions. Jyn thought drinking a glass and standing over the body, pistol still smoking in her second hand, of the original owner was satisfying enough.

From the lack of alcohol comes Brun.

A good seven inches taller than Jyn and a mouth that could spit witty comebacks faster than blaster bolts, Brun easily became a constant in Jyn’s stressing days. The only true point they agreed over was the lack of alcohol throughout the pit of a system.

From the Outer Rim, Brun was raised an orphan and made a man far before his years should have allowed him to.

“When was the first time you ever killed a man,” he had asked one late night as they kicked up their black sodden boots onto the war table.

“I was nine. I was stupid and got caught in a scramble with some Stormtroopers. I fired blindly as I ran and just so happened to hit one in the head. I felt like shit, but kept running.”

Brun just slapped the table with a big, meaty hand that Jyn was sure could cover half a grown man’s face. He spit out a crude laugh, like he never practiced the emotion enough.

“Nine? That is old.”

Jyn had raised an eyebrow.

He puffed out his chest a little more and smirked ruthlessly.

“I was seven when I had my first kill. Caught a thief going through my mother’s shop while she was out. I caught him in the act. He ran, but I was faster. Caught up to him a block away. While he ran on the streets, I used the roofs. When I was little, they were sturdy enough to hold my weight.”

He paused and took in a deep breath, like reminiscing was giving him proud memories.

“I took him down with a rock the size of a big fruit. He fell quick and easily. I laughed at his weakness before I realized he was dead.”

Jyn simply nodded with the story. A year later, he told her, his mother tried to stop a Stormtrooper from taking what scarce credits they still owned. He had shot her as Brun watched, wide eyed.

“Killed that man, too, you know. Found the fucker a week later and took him out properly. Knives are perfect weapons when you want to get up close and watch that little glimmer of light leave their eyes.”

Anyone else listening in on these horrid stories would have balked internally and made sure to make a radius around the people the likes of Jyn and Brun. But this was war and reality. The galaxy was full of monsters; some younger and seeming more innocent than others.

A kid killing a man was no more disastrous than a soldier killing an enemy on the field. War was war; it did not discriminate. Death was means of revenge. One lesson learned on the streets as a war orphan was that one had to make their own justice.

Killing a thief with a rock was no more monstrous than a man shooting his oppressor from three stories up behind a window blockade.

Brun disappears three years after Liberation Day. The last time Jyn had seen him, he had been winking at her from across a Command meeting in an effort to amuse her. Humor was the best way to stay surfaced during long and drawling meetings.

Two young men out on scouting duty find his body in a mining cave not three miles from Headquarters. His autopsy showed that he had been drinking something potent enough to tranquilize a sentient with a mass three times his size. Stumbling drunk, he had fallen over and hit his head on a nearby boulder.

Later that same week, Jyn pays a special visit to the local inking master. A man with a greying head and eyes sunk far into his thin skull, Rick manages to scribble a permanent line across Jyn’s right arm.

The tattoo starts from her right wrist and ended three inches before her elbow. She chose a thin, black, clean font for the message.

( _Death Doesn’t Discriminate)_

 

_______

 

“You’re fucking _kidding_ me,” Jyn had nearly shouted aloud at the pilot’s bright news. “Han _fucking_ Solo has a kid?”

Chewbacca stood tall and as proud as Jyn had ever seen a Wookie get when Han strolled in years after he dropped her off in the KX system. The Wookie barely paid a second thought the security detail that followed no less than ten steps behind Jyn every moment of the reunion. Their black blaster rifles were snug across their backs and their hands were pressed into their lower backs as a sign of their silent respect for their General.

“Don’t act so damn surprised,” Han had chuckled as Jyn smiled widely at a picture of Ben he carried around his front pocket. “It was only a matter of time before I found myself a nice girl and settled down.”

Jyn shook her head disbelievingly as she handed back the miniature holo-projector with the picture on it. Han stuffed it carefully back into its place.

“With Leia no less; which I won’t believe until I see it for myself.”

Han chuckled softly as he watched his long lost drinking buddy shove her gloved hands into the pockets of her black coat with fringed edges and toughened padding. To the captain, she looked more KX than anything else now. Freedom had done her good. Save for the few new strands of grey just at the lining between her hair and forehead.

She had blamed them on stress when Han made a comment about her turning old since the last time her saw her.

“I’m thirty, not one hundred.”

“Yeah, _sure;_ whatever you say pipsqueak.”

She shoved him so hard with her shoulder at that he almost went sprawling into Chewbacca’s side. With a peal of laughter, they made their way down the ramp of Command’s ship towards the light from the city outside.

Close to a decade of cold and sparse sunlight had taught Jyn to dress dark, hunker down through the weather, and be suspicious of any sound against her door that did not sound like passing wind.

Ikara was _nothing_ like Headquarters back in the KX system.

The very Naboo air feels too soft and sweet to breathe at first when Jyn makes her way down the ramp of the _First_ _Treader_. The sun was too high in the horizon and the sound of gushing paradise was almost too overwhelming.

After years of not seeing a clear day, this was almost too much change for Jyn to handle at once. The two members of her security detail seem to have a similar reaction. Their eyes widen at the flourishing greenery lashing the nearby mountains that loom like guardians.

At the center of the landing grounds stands a figure clad in white. For a startling second, Jyn barely recognizes the princess.

The last time they even stood on the same planet, Jyn was telling a general to fuck off and a Senator to wipe her name from existence.

“Ah, my beautiful wife!” Han chirped loudly and proudly, aiming the words more to the disbelieving Jyn than the sentients who had gathered onto the landing grounds to watch this monumental moment.

But Jyn did not care about what Han had to say. They could address his marriage as they got drunk, like old times, on the _Falcon_ some other time. Her eyes were focused on the princess-turned-senator before her.

The contingent whom followed the princess out onto the landing grounds watched quietly and precariously from their positions a few steps behind Leia. Jyn's detail stopped perfectly five steps behind her when she came to a halt.

“Jyn Erso.”

“I haven't gone by that name in many years.”

Leia arched a perfect eyebrow.

“General.”

“Senator.”

A beat of silence passes.

“The New Republic welcomes you and the peoples of systems KX-239, KX-245, and KX-551 to Naboo. If there is anything you should need, please feel free to personally tell me and I will make sure accommodations are made to your liking, General.”

“You wouldn't happen to have a proper glass of good brandy lying around somewhere nearby, would you?”

_______

 

The Alliance was never an option to return to for Jyn. It was a brooding mess that was struggling to care for its own members. If she hadn't bidden her time with the people of the KX systems, the Alliance would most likely turn away a horde of thousands more looking for refuge at the same time.

Refuge in simple numbers was manageable.

But an entire system looking for aid was the definition of a disaster waiting to happen. It would brew and then blow at the most unexpected moment. The Alliance was not an option; not anymore or ever.

On the other hand, the New Republic was _not_ the Alliance.

The Alliance may have been the parent force for the new government emerging from the ashes of the last one, but the New Republic had something the Alliance did not: Leia at its head and the undivided attention of the entire galaxy.

The aldermen had been wary of Jyn’s request to contact the young Senator. Convincing the majority of them to think about the needs of their impoverished people and townships was not the issue. It was the lack of trust they had in the leaders of the new government that set the aldermen and Command wary of Jyn’s proposition.

“They left us to save their own asses.”

“Yes, but this isn't the Alliance anymore.”

“Who says this _new_ group will help us?”

“We can try reaching out. There is a different leadership now.”

“Governments can go to hell. They are shitty to us.”

“You and your people will die if we do not try. There is nothing left for you here anymore.”

The discussions turned into arguments. Sometimes, the aldermen were in support while others were ready to regrow the system. With dismay, Jyn knew regrowing was impossible. The moons were stripped of their valuable resources and the people were beginning to grow restless from an impending economical downfall. There was no credit circulation and rations were not enough to keep the townships fed.

It was time to leave for a better home. The New Republic was still growing itself and at the same time offering promises of everything the people of KX-239 were in need of.

“We can contact them anonymously.”

“Why anonymous? Would they not recognize you?”

“Maybe, but my name attracts too much attention.”

“Shit, what did you do to them exactly?”

“I told their General to fuck off.”

In the end, a three hundred word message was transmitted three weeks after Jyn proposed the idea. It was a basic message conveying that the princess would be interested in checking out their little corner of the galaxy.

By the end of the nine day week, a team of Republic single passenger ships were landing on the tarmacs where the Imperial cargo ships used to land.

Leia never needed to send a message in reply. A trio of representatives would be enough. They could slip in, take note of the situation at hand, but leave before anyone made a big fuss about them being there.

Jyn had stood tall and wary from the guards tower at the edge of the landing tarmacs to watch as three brightly painted single-piloted ships opened their hatches simultaneously. Their droids were lowered to the roughly paved ground as the pilots climbed out one by one.

She watched as the three figures tucked their helmets under their arms and began towards the doors to the single hangar in the area where Jyn knew a throng of ten (hand-picked) guards would escort the arrivals to Headquarters.

As the figures walked closer and closer to their guard detail, a spark of nostalgia hit her somewhere deep in her gut. Of the three arrivals, only one was a human male. His dark hair was thick enough to half cover the topmost of his head. Jyn would know him anywhere, regardless of the years that would pass.

Cassian had readjusted his helmet one more time under his arm before reaching the contingent of guards awaiting them.

It was not until they stood in the same room in Headquarters that she could see the sly little greying hairs appearing behind his ears. They mixed handsomely like spices with the natural black of his hair. Time had done Cassian no favors. His body was leaner but thinner, his jaw speckled lightly over with his typical facial hair, and his face a mix of weariness and exhaustion.

The Headquarters Jyn and Command established was hardly at the same level as the Alliance’s. The only different was that this Headquarters was almost always covered in a black mining dust of some sort, like a second layer of skin.

The trio stood by the empty war table in silence as they awaited Command’s arrival. Under the guise of intrigue their eyes had roamed the room with an appreciation for the Unification.

Their eyes latched onto Jyn the second she passed through the doors and into the room. She was the definition of superiority and pride as she walked confidently around the war table towards her customary place directly across the table from the visitors. Her security detail followed a few steps behind. Two looming figures in black with rifles strapped across their backs, they were the epitome of defense.

Commanding officers and aldermen alike followed in Jyn’s wake. With their dark clothing and drawn expressions illuminated by the poor light, they looked menacing. They were the personification of a group of people who would kill anyone or tear down any wall to fight for what was rightfully theirs.

And with Jyn at the center of them, leading and providing her expertise, Cassian knew they could probably conquer the galaxy.

Years of separation could not keep his admiration at bay as he watched her slide into place directly across from him and his companions. Her officers spread out beside and around her, a flock of black and brooding expressions.

She placed her palms down on the war table and leaned forward until her face was illuminated by the soft light emanating from the edges of it. Her mulled green eyes caught Cassian’s across the room and a pit opened in his stomach.

Something along her arm catches his eye. Her jacket sleeves were slightly rolled up a few inches above her wrist. He could make out the beginning of a word in dark ink.

From what he could see, it read _death._

Jyn tipped her chin up and Cassian met her eyes.

( _They were supposed to die together.)_

“Shall we begin?”

 

_______

 

Leia admires the efficiency of the KX people’s arrival. Fourteen ships border the horizon like great black birds waiting to touch down. The fifteenth, Command’s, sits like a hawk on the landing ground.

One by one, each ship touches down to let off its load. Two thousand passengers would unload from each ship. Sentients clad in dark fabrics such as Jyn’s emerged from the unloading ramps with expressions of awe at the rich greenery surrounding them.

In the middle of the throng were the very members of Jyn’s Commanding force. Captains and Sergeants alike helped organize children onto transports to be taken further into the city, Generals and Commanders helped older citizens hobble down the ramps. In a few hours Leia was a witness to the collection and support that the people of the KX system shared.

Did Jyn know that there was more unification between her people than a single document could ever describe? Leia was both amazed and if she were honest, envious of the ease at which Jyn had brought so many groups together to fight as a single identity.

Leia herself was familiar with the cracks that were common throughout the Alliance when it was in full force. It was a monumental feat that left Leia in silent admiration and awe as to how far the older woman had traversed in the years since her resignation.

A screeching sound catches Leia’s attention while she was greeting an alderman responsible for one of the leading townships. Both the alderman and the princess turned heads at the same second in time to witness a joyous reunion between the General and a horde of small children.

They were children covered in dust, some raising dirtied arms to cover their eyes from the beating sunlight. The small mass made a collective rush for Jyn, who reached her arms wide with an even wider smile.

Leia thought the expression made her look light years younger.

Even the two men looming over Jyn’s back crack a smile that Leia busses is a routine reaction on these occasions. They never lift a finger when three kids half Jyn’s size leap onto her. They squeeze her so tightly her arms end up pinned between them.

“Liberator!” the kids call out as they were escorted towards a group of female Twi’lek clad in blue and patient smiles. The orphanage had sent them special to help escort certain children to the refurbished orphanage.

But for all their past losses, the kids absolutely adore Jyn. A few were tepid and opted to stay abreast of the throng. Others began pulling away friends or siblings as the Twi’leks called out for some sort of order.

“Can we play races?” one little girl asks Jyn, pulling insistently on Jyn’s sleeve. “Can we stay with you here, Liberator?”

The alderman caught Leia’s attention in an attempt to resume their earlier conversation. But in the back of her mind, the senator was still thinking about how Jyn looked so reluctant to hand off the little girl’s hand to the orphanage worker.

 

_____

 

The trio of representatives opted to stay in a hostel that overlooked their ships. It was also conveniently near Headquarters. A detail of guards in black had escorted Cassian and his companions out late in the night after the long meeting. He spent much of the night pacing his small room that smelled faintly of dust and old oil.

Seven years had not changed the intensity of Jyn’s presence. He could vaguely remember the tone of her voice as she told Draven to fuck off. Time away from the Alliance had done good for her.

With a lack of access and her name wiped from existence, Cassian had very little to follow her moments. In fact, he had almost nothing. Han was a dead end. The captain was sworn into secrecy.

The friendship Han and Jyn shared must have gone deeper than Cassian realized because no amount of bribery the Alliance or Cassian offered the smuggler could get him to reveal where he took Jyn.

Not even Leia could get him to talk.

“He is my husband,” Leia had told Cassian months after the establishing of the New Republic. “Asking him is a dead end. He is entitled to his discretions and will not tell.” As a result, the search for Jyn was like a little glowing thread burning out.

With the war coming to a climatic end Cassian was expected to focus his energies and talents towards easing the Alliance into the cracks the Empire was too slow to cover up.

For months at a time he was assigned to working undercover. As he climbed the ladder of ranking year by year, any thoughts of Jyn began to disperse. They were brief and sparse, but the hope of ever finding her again seemed to diminish reluctantly.

There were times when he was browsing a crowded market or city for targets when his heart would pound at the sight of a low bun on the back of a woman’s head. A little piece of him would deflate when the person would turn around and not be who he was looking for.

He should have seen the signs, no matter how small they were.

_Someday, when this is all over, how would you like to go out and get a drink with me sometime?_

It was a common reoccurring line that passed through his thoughts whenever he took a few moments to think about their goodbye. Her words had already felt blurred, like a fuzzy hologram he struggled to see.

Seeing her again in KX Headquarters was like feeling a flood wash over his mind. He could remember the line perfectly again like it was a memory from yesterday.

It was invigorating. He had flown out the next morning without another glance or word from her.

Now, three standard months since that very brief meeting, he watches from afar as Jyn corals a group of children towards orphanage workers clad in blue. Her hair was pulled into a tight braid that ended just before reaching her shoulders. A few greying streaks could be seen from this distance more clearly than during the negotiations long ago.

_Someday, when this is all over, how would you like to go out and get a drink with me sometime?_

 

_____

 

Ikara was a frighteningly bright city. With tall stone buildings that gleamed in the setting sunlight, it was a reminder of the opulence beyond KX’s boundaries. She had almost forgotten what it was like to breathe in fresh air that was not circulated three times through a machine.

Han himself volunteered to escort Jyn to the rooms she would be sharing with no one but herself.

“I’m not bunking with anyone?” she asked him when the door opened to reveal a small apartment obviously meant for a single tenant.

“Ikara is bigger than you think. We have more than enough homes for both the New Republic and refugees to stay here.” He wrote down the code to her keypad on a piece of stranded paper and handed it to her.

“Where are your two body guards?”

“I released them until I need them again. They're getting situated with their families.” Jyn set her bag down. It was the same small duffel she had carried with her on her resignation day from the Alliance.

“Is there anything else you'll need?” Han asked her softly as Jyn acutely took in her new surroundings. The small apartment was impeccably clean compared to the room she had earned for herself in KX Headquarters.

She shrugged off her heavy jacket and let it fall over onto the bed.

 _Death Doesn't Discriminate_ catches Han’s eye.

“Never knew you were into dramatics, Erso.”

“Not dramatics, just life lessons.”

“Should I even ask what it’s about?”

“Only if you really want to know,” Jyn chuckled as Han gave the tattoo a glance. It was written in clean lines with no other flair than the meaning.

“You’re going to have to tell me the story some other time,” he tells her as he makes for the door. “I have to go see Ben.”

“Until I see the kid with my own two sober eyes, I still think you are bull shitting me about having a kid.” She followed Han to the door.

“Yeah, whatever you say Sergeant.”

The door slides open.

“I’m a General.”

“Nah; you’ll always be Sergeant Erso to me.”

She waited until he disappeared around the corner before stepping out of the apartment herself. She tucked the little folded piece of paper into a pocket to get back into her room later.

 

_____

 

She finds him sitting with a pilot in a small cantina just a few streets over from her assigned living accommodations. His companion was hard to miss the moment she snuck in through the door. His bright orange flight suit was noticeable from any corner of the sparsely populated room and that was even with the dim lighting.

The pilot excused himself politely when he realized Cassian was paying more attention to Jyn that their conversation about the recent arriving refugees.

After months of guessing what was written in ink across her arm, Cassian finally saw the full message printed across her skin.

_Death Doesn’t Discriminate_

He momentarily thinks vaguely of Bodhi with his crooked smile and constant bravery, of Chirrut and his unbridled faith, in Baze with his silent but apparent love for those he cared about. As Jyn makes her way across the room, he thinks he may understand why she got the message branded across her skin permanently.

It was reminder, he knows, of what war can bring upon anyone’s lives.

No one was safe from disaster or from miscarried missions.

Death did not discriminate between the faithful or the broken on the beaches of Scarif. It did not discriminate between the evident heroes and tyrants who knew what their crimes were. It did not discriminate when it came as a wave towards that fucking beach.

( _They were supposed to die together.)_

“General,” he greeted when she was only an arm’s distance away from him. His glass sat half empty on the counter. Reno had not yet made his round to make sure his customers needed anything else yet.

“Captain.”

“It is actually ‘Major’ now.”

“My apologizes. I congratulate you on the promotion.”

A moment of silent lapses between them. He notices her lack of security.

His accent sends a rush of nostalgia for the past through Jyn. No one else in the galaxy or that Jyn has ever met had the same exotic twist to their words.

“It has been a while, hasn’t it?” Jyn asked in a softer tone this time. Her mulled green eyes danced with the glimmer of the sunlight pouring in through the far windows of the cantina. The warm light basked her features gently.

Cassian chuckled, albeit it came out sounding more nervous than relieved at being able to strike up a normal conversation with the woman who he had sporadically thought about for years.

Her lips turned up at the corner when Reno, a big burly male humanoid, interrupted long enough to ask Jyn if she was there to ‘simply admire the menu or order something already,’ Cassian could practically read the next thought passing through her head when she turned to him with a soft expression.

“I think we have waited long enough. How would you like that drink now, Major?” It felt like the puzzles of their disjointed years apart were finally fitting into place to give them this little moment.

“I would like nothing less.”

Reno refilled his glass and handed Jyn a glass with something brown, like the color of caramel candy. They raise their glasses and tip them forward, the edges clinking. It brings a slight upturn to Cassian’s lips.

 

_____

 

The morning emerges slower on Naboo than it did in the KX system.

Jyn sits up with the sheets pooled around her waist to watch as the sun slowly rises above the distant horizon. Her loose hair kissed the skin of her collar that peeked out from beneath the sleep shirt she took without permission.

The sunlight was a caramelized color; reds and golds and yellows blended over the brim of the horizon only to spill over everything beneath it. It was a sight Jyn had not appreciated more in her younger years.

Her bed was small, but at least it faced the large window at the far end of her small apartment. She sat up with her back against the wall and her knees enveloped by her arms.

Cassian made a mumbling sound that could have been a sigh beside Jyn.

The bed was small and meant for a single person, but Jyn did not give a single fuck. Personally, she loved the feeling of sleeping skin on skin with her partners. The smaller the bed, the more comfortable it would become. Whereas the sheets bunched around Jyn’s waist, they covered the majority of Cassian, up to his shoulder at least.

He had let her commandeer his shirt to sleep in for the night, despite her bag with clothes that would more appropriately fit her merely a few feet away on the floor. Cassian had dumped it there earlier the previous evening in an attempt to clear the bed of any obstructions.

She watches the sun rise in the distance and lets her hand drift to lay gently on Cassian’s arm as he sleeps, a reminder that she was still there.

He was warm (like home).

An hour later he opens his eyes just enough to blink through the intrusive sunlight and wipes the exhaustion from his eyes with his hands. Before he can move to sit up, Jyn slides back down under the sheets and tucks herself comfortably into his side.

Her previous one-night stands used to end with her sneaking out of the person’s room or vice versa. She likes this alternative ending to a fantastic night _much_ better. Cassian drapes an arm around her shoulders to pull Jyn closer. His hand slowly rubs lower and lower down her arm. His fingers pass over the thin lines that serve as a remind of the Alliance's harshness. 

It was terrifying, waking up with Cassian beside her, but exhilarating. The night had begun with two clinking glasses to toast nearly a decade of separation and had ended with Cassian kissing after escorting her back to her door.

But this was more than just a one-night stand. It had to be.

It was warmth and consolation. He was familiar.

( _They were supposed to die together.)_

Cassian turned to press his lips to her temple.

“Welcome home.”

She closed her eyes briefly and smiled, for once, in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated!  
> Again, getting a little burnt out on ideas so I've decided to let the readers vote on what my next story should be about:
> 
> 1\. Cassian x Jyn: Royalty / Forbidden love AU
> 
> or 
> 
> 2\. Cassian x Jyn: Modern Adoption / Parenting AU
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments below!


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